


Hallow's Eve!

by asteroidhearts



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Fun, Gen, Halloween, Heist, Other, Romance, based on b99's heist, it's fun!!!, no b99 characters tho :(, that's why i added b99 as fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-05-25 15:50:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asteroidhearts/pseuds/asteroidhearts
Summary: inspired by Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Halloween III episodeIt’s Halloween and the 3rd annual Halloween heist in the Tower is afoot!  This time, it’s Tony the man of iron vs. Loki the god of mischief battling for the titleUltimate Avenger/Genius.  Everyone is excited, except for Ara—Tony’s trusted left-hand woman and Loki’s girlfriend of 7 weeks—who is left out of both teams because neither player wants to risk losing the heist due to their respective connections with her.Friendly tip: Don’t be so invested in a one-night heist that you neglect the things that matter more.





	1. Pay Attention

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey, i'm back! been a while since my last fic. also i was supposed to publish a sequel to "don't cross the bar" but i just...couldn't...so that's on the backburner for now.
> 
> BUT! i'm suuuper excited about this short-fic. it is inspired (quite heavily but not wholly) by the 3rd heist in b99 and that's why b99 is in the fandoms tag, but you don't have to watch it to understand what's happening here :-)
> 
> DISCLAIMER: idk where on the mcu timeline this fic falls. post-winter soldier? idk but definitely post-avengers 1. really i just grabbed details here and there and smushed them together; there's even an aos detail somewhere in here. oh, and i have never smelled a paco rabanne cologne in my life.
> 
> enjoy and leave love!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cold open, kinda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * 06202018 - changed the time from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. let's create an overwhelming time pressure for these kids.

Everyone usually assumes that all the Avengers live at the Avengers Tower.  It sounds cozy and quite cute, but frankly it’d be a little strange if a group of functional adults with their own private lives shared the same living quarters.  Besides Tony, who does live there because he owns the dang place, everyone else should have their own place.

 

Like Steve, who lives and breathes Brooklyn.  Or Bruce, whose 7 PhDs warrant him a well-rounded, well-paying series of STEM careers and can get a spot in Tribeca if he wanted.  Or Nat and Clint, SHIELD agents who are constantly on the move because agents.  Especially Thor, a whole frickin’ god (super powerful extraterrestrial being?) who’s got his own planet.  And even Ara—the latest addition to the team who underwent terragenesis thanks to a fish-oil capsule and was revealed to be an earth-bending inhuman—because from working in the engineering division of Stark Industries to her promotion as Tony Stark’s personal assistant guaranteed her a lease for a sweet unit _in_ Manhattan.

 

Everyone _should_ have their own place… but they don’t.

 

After New York, Tony designed 6 floors for each Avenger.  Each floor has its own lounge, master bedroom for the Avenger plus one spare room, and other amenities specially catered to that member (Steve’s floor has an art studio!).  Naturally, they all moved in.  It’s not like Steve set up a retirement fund in the ‘40s, so he can’t afford the 21st century.  Bruce and Tony are lab partners; it was better to just be within JARVIS distance.  Nat and Clint had tons of downtime even as operatives, it turns out.  Thor was in Asgard plenty but he loves Earth so much that his floor always smells like him because he’s around often.  Then when Ara the inhuman came around, Tony bought out the remainder of her lease and built a floor for her; Ara wept in gratitude about it for a week.  Basically, it’s great to have a thoughtful, smart, rich friend.

 

Then topsy-turvy events happened soon after that.  Thor brought back Loki and placed him on house arrest in the Tower, because isolating an isolationist isn’t punishment but surrounding him with people is.  About a year after that, the mutual pining between Loki and Ara became evident to everyone else in the Tower.  Fast forward to Bucky and Sam sorta-kinda moving in (Bucky was penniless and Sam thought he might as well move to New York, so the Air Force found him a place but he hangs around the Tower more).  Then fast forward to Loki and Ara getting together, to everyone’s relief.  A few days after that was Loki’s official pardon, followed by his extended stay at the Tower; he basically lives on Midgard now and has only gone to Asgard when necessary.

 

Fast forward to… now!

 

“Darling.”  Loki stands from the large L-shaped couch as soon as Ara enters.  She’s wearing a dark blue blouse with a frilly collar and dark jeans, a typical lab day outfit.  Loki holds her close, his smile soft and warm.

 

Ara smiles back up at him.  “Sorry, I was in the lab.  I meant to come up earlier but I got held back.”

 

“Darling,” Loki says, meeting her eyes, “you don’t have to apologize for working hard.  I’m glad you’re here.”

 

Ara grows shy under Loki’s eyes, so she looks away and glances around the decorated space.  They’re in the main lounge in the topmost floor of the Tower, where the famous Stark parties are typically held as well as where the team chills on days-off.  Bucky and Sam are murdering each other on Mario Kart, Steve is eating cereal as he watches the bloodbath, Bruce is brewing coffee in the attached open kitchen.  Ara notes the absence of a few people.

 

“Where are Tony, Clint, and Nat?” she asks Loki.  “And your brother?  I thought he’d be back by now.”

 

Loki could have easily said that he doesn’t care where anyone else is, because the only person he cares about is in front of him.  But even before they were in a relationship, he noticed that Ara isn’t a big fan of sweet nothings or cliché romantic lines.  She cringes at them, involuntarily.  She never tells him to stop though because she understands his poetic tendencies—plus, she knows they’re genuine—but Loki likes her so much he holds the comment back.

 

He kisses her on the forehead instead.  “They’ll be here in a bit.  Come sit with me, let’s distract James and Samuel.”

 

As Ara and Loki try to mess with Bucky and Sam, the rest of the city and the country are in varying states of giddy.  Kids in costumes are going door-to-door for candy, carved pumpkins line suburban driveways, B-list horror movies are playing on satellite TV channels.  America is making itself more vulnerable to dark forces tonight because tonight… is Halloween.

 

8 p.m. EDT, on the dot.  The winds of New York may be cold but the lounge area in the Tower is warm with the energy buzzing in the air.  Black and orange Halloween decorations hang around the lounge, a lone witch statue Tony fished out of some box stands by the fridge, fall-scented candles dot the lounge to calm the buzz—it is as it always has been every Halloween, but the buzz isn’t because of the holiday.

 

It’s because every Halloween in the Tower, the Avengers toss aside their teamwork to engage in a spine-chilling, blood-boiling, soul-electrifying Halloween heist!

 

Tony is the only contestant to volunteer for the heist, though granted this is only the 3rd one.  Whomever he goes against, he himself picks since no one volunteers.  Why they don’t want to play, they don’t disclose, but Year 1 was Tony vs. Clint—Clint bet that he can break through every layer of Tony’s security by stealing a vintage pen from his office, which he did.  That marked the beginning of the heist tradition.  Year 2 was Tony vs. Natasha, when the official mechanics were placed—Tony secured the Captain America plush he and his team struggled to even find (it was in the lounge, beside the other Avengers stuffed toys on _display_ ).

 

Nat and Clint enter the lounge to find Bucky and Sam ganging up on Loki, attempting to whack him with their Wii remotes while Loki dodges each hit with magic.  Ara has joined Steve on the other side of the couch, the shorter side of the L, after quickly grabbing herself a spoon so she can eat from Steve’s big bowl of cereal.

 

“Breakfast for dinner?  That’s kinda nice,” Clint comments, shuffling past the dudes.  “Smart, actually.”

 

Clint sits next to Ara, who scrunches her nose at the operative.  He’s wearing a new cologne and she can’t decide whether it smells good or if it’s just _loud_.  Frankly it smells like angry lemons.

 

“Clint, this cologne on you is… violent.”  She waves a hand in front of her face as though swatting away the odor.

 

“What do you mean _‘violent’_ ?  It’s Paco Rabanne, I spent $90 on it,” he explains.  Ara just shakes her head like, _You scammed yourself, man_.

 

“Are those _my_ frosted flakes?” Nat fakes pain in her voice as she sits next to Steve.  “Don’t steal my stuff, guys, come on.”

 

“If it’s your cereal, then why was the box in my lounge?”  Steve’s cheeks are stuffed with cereal so his words came out kind of smushed.

 

“All this cereal talk is making me crave breakfast food.”  Clint pats his tummy.  “Do we still have those microwaveable pancakes?  I want pancakes.”

 

He swings his legs over the back of the couch and runs to the open kitchen.  As soon as he’s within 2 feet of the fridge, the witch guarding it cackles maniacally.  Bruce squeaks a loud “AH!”, jumping at the sudden noise, his heart in his hand.

 

“ _Ara!_ ”  Bucky shouts all of a sudden.  “Your boyfriend is annoying!”

 

Loki has Bucky’s remote levitating beyond the couch, out of his reach.  Just then, Sam’s remote is yanked out of his hand with green magic before floating alongside Bucky’s remote.  The look on Sam’s face is priceless.

 

“Ara!  If Loki suddenly has a bald spot, it’s ‘cause of me.  Come here, greasy boy!”

 

Ara barely glances at them as she continues eating.  Thor walks in just as Sam’s crotch is in Loki’s face, with Sam helplessly reaching for his remote while his other hand has Loki by the hair.  Bucky’s armpit is around Loki’s neck as he too tries to grab his remote. They’re all screaming at this point. Why Sam and Bucky just don’t get off the couch and _walk_ to the remotes, no one knows.

 

Thor chuckles at the scene.  “Nice to see that my brother has built a rapport with my friends in my absence.  Evening, everyone, happy Halloween.”

 

“Happy Halloween, Thor,” Ara greets, raising her spoon.

 

The god of thunder rests Mjölnir by the doorway and strides around to the part of the couch where the main source of entertainment seems to be a bowl of cereal.  He waves at Bruce and Clint in the kitchen before standing behind the Ara, Steve, and Nat.  This close, it’s easier to see the fresh cuts on Thor's bulging arms and chiseled face, recently cleaned but fresh nonetheless.

 

“Were you fighting before you came here?  Are you okay, do you need the med bay?” Ara asks, ready to take him there.

 

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Ara.  It was just a skirmish on the edge of Vanaheim and our healers tended to me right after.  I’m okay,” he smiles graciously. He nods at the cereal. “May I?”

 

Ara regards him a bit before scooping up frosted flakes and gently bringing it up to Thor.  The prince lowers his head so he can be fed more easily.

 

Loki spots this in the corner of his eye.  Immediately he cuts off his magical hold on the remotes, sending Bucky and Sam to leap over the couch to catch them on time.

 

By Odin’s beard, Loki has full confidence in Ara and their young relationship and it was just cereal, but he _just_ got with Ara after years of not being with her and somehow, her spoon-feeding his oh-so-lovely brother, like, just this one time set off alarms throughout his body.  Ara _is_ , to an extent, hands-on with every other member of the team, which Loki doesn’t mind—she was their caretaker long before she was his girlfriend.  With Thor, though, it’s… complicated.  Loki has learned not to compare himself to his brother, yes, but still.   _“THOR ALERT!  THOR ALERT!”_ the alarms are screeching.

 

“Ara, my darling, I think Bucky scratched my neck,” Loki calls out, one dramatic hand on the left side of his neck.

 

Ara leaves her spoon with Thor and rushes over to Loki, situating herself on his left.  Even after becoming a part of the Avengers, she’s sort of still Tony’s assistant, which means she’s still in charge of housekeeping, record-keeping, making sure the team is safe, etc.  So scratches are a part of her checklist.

 

(But… that’s underselling it.  She became Tony’s assistant so she can be more accessible to the Avengers.  As the caretaker and “housekeeper”, Ara observes them closely so that, as engineer, she can make improvements to their suits, their floors, their tech, and _so_ much more.  For example, she placed an encrypted tracker on Steve’s shield.  She zapped Bruce and Tony once with a gadget she made that she calls _Thor Jr._ , and now their biochemistry are tracked 24/7 on all her devices—she will immediately know the second Bruce’s blood pressure ticks a digit higher or when Tony’s heart rate picks up just before a nervous episode.  Less complicated, she gave JARVIS 2 more abilities: rapping and beat-boxing.)

 

“Show me where,” she says, one gentle hand on his neck.  “Bucky, please be – ”

 

“Sweet- Sweetheart—” Loki throws his head back in a small laugh.  He rests his head on the back of the couch, his hand over Ara’s.  “I’m okay, I’m not wounded.”

 

Ara makes a face.  “Hey.  No teasing the assistant.”

 

Loki mouths a sorry, smiling lightly.  His eyes linger upon Ara’s mildly scrunched-up face for a beat too long.  His gaze is so gentle, so caring, but somehow also boisterous and a tiny bit suggestive.  Ara can’t help but blush, feeling herself shrink.  There’s just something about his looks that makes her feel vulnerable all the time, like he’s undressing her somehow but very gently, or like he’s mapping her entire body with his piercing gaze.  She doesn’t enjoy feeling helpless like that, but in the 7 weeks that they’ve been together, she’s learned many things.  One of them is that she has no reason to feel helpless with him.  And yet…

 

Loki brings Ara’s hand, the one he holds, to his lips and leaves a chaste kiss on her palm.  The pink tinge on Ara’s cheek deepens.

 

“ _Eeewwwwww!_  Gross!”  The other people in the lounge jeer, save for Bruce and Thor and Steve who only laugh.  Sam, Bucky, and Clint’s voices come out louder.  “Get a room, you gross kids!”

 

Ara buries her head in Loki’s neck to hide her flaming embarrassment.  Loki wraps himself around her protectively and kisses the top of her head, making the team jeer louder.  Loki’s laughter rumbles in his chest, the sound vibrating against Ara.  She mutters a quiet “ _Noooo_ ” into the crook of Loki’s neck.  Her breath tickles him a little; he giggles.

 

“EVERYONE!”  Tony’s voice booms from the entryway.  “Let the gross kids be themselves and turn your attention to me.  We have more pressing matters at hand.”

 

The team’s laughter subsides.  Steve and Thor finish the last bit of the cereal.  Sam shuts off the game while Bucky sets the remotes aside on the coffee table.  Bruce and Clint approach the couch, coffee and a bag of tiny microwaveable pancakes in hand respectively.  Ara turns her head a little to peek at Tony: dude’s wearing a ratty old beanie, a black hoodie with a comic jack-o’-lantern, faded jeans, and Adidas sliders.

 

“It’s time…for the HALLOWEEN HEIST!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: Civil War, but Halloween.


	2. Civil War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 2 players pick their team members.

The buzz of energy in the lounge concentrates on the couch area as the fire of the Halloween heist rises to its genesis.  There’s excited, good vibrations in the air, but a weird tension has also settled among the team members.  None of them  may volunteer to go against Tony tonight, but once the heist officially begins, the greed for victory takes over.  These people are competitive as hell, no matter how amicable they may look on the outside.  Even the most conservative of the team can become the key to win the heist.  The point is, the heist is fun, and it’s fun to brag about winning it.

 

“As we all know, every year on Halloween, we engage in a heist for a battle of wits,” Tony says, sounding a bit too formal, on purpose.  He mumbles, “Even though I’m really the only person who wants to play.”

 

“Well, technically I started this whole thing,” Clint quips.

 

Tony points at him.  “Point made and acknowledged.”  He faces the team again, clasping his hands.  “Still, I’m the only constant in this heist.”

 

A few members are ready to protest and/or urge Tony to move along but he holds up a hand to halt them.  Grumpily, they back down.

 

“But!  As tradition goes, we open the floor to anyone who wants to be my opponent in this year’s Halloween heist.”

 

Ara has removed herself from Loki’s embrace, now sitting with her back against the couch while Loki’s arm is draped behind her.  She tilts her head up at Tony.

 

“Why are you talking like you swallowed a dictionary?”

 

Tony stares at her.  “Arabella.”

 

“Not my name.”

 

“Does anyone volunteer?” Tony asks the team.

 

3 full seconds pass before someone raises their hand.  Everyone gasps, Ara’s being the loudest, because no one expected Loki to volunteer.

 

To be fair, no one expected anyone to volunteer.  But Loki?  Year 1, he was too stuck in his superiority complex to even bat an eyelash at the heist.  Year 2, he participated only to spend all Halloween finding excuses to be near Ara.  As much as anyone, he doesn’t really have a concrete reason to go against Tony for the heist.  Theoretically.

 

In actuality, Loki has planned for this heist since January.  He knew he could use it to show off his skills to impress Ara, but then they became official in September which he couldn’t have predicted.  Their getting together didn’t derail his plans…sort of.  Everything in the plan is the same, save for one part.  The goal is still to impress Ara, but to be honest, the greed for victory is already taking over.  The goal is now 50% impress Ara, 50% win.

 

But somehow, his volunteering has stirred the team.  Now, they  _ want _ to play.

 

“Well, well, well,” Tony nods approvingly as Loki stands and joins him upfront.  He’s honestly surprised but all the more game.  “I’m super curious.  Why’d you volunteer?”

 

Loki cocks an eyebrow nonchalantly, his version of a shrug.  “No reason.  It’s a night of festivities and I want to be festive.”

 

“Stark, you must know my brother is the god of mischief and lies,” Thor says pointedly.

 

“You pain me, brother.  And here I was, considering you for my team.”

 

“I was going to say, since you are such, you may have already won the heist.”

 

Loki raises his eyebrows at Thor who only rolls his eyes.

 

“In any case,” Tony interjects, again too formally, “we have our volunteer and we can proceed with the heist.”

 

“You’re weirding me out with the way you’re talking,” says Nat.

 

“Seriously,” Ara adds, smirking playfully.  “Did you finally decide to read a book before you came here?  Is that why you were gone?”

 

Loki snorts.  Nat high-fives Ara.

 

Tony ignores them.  “Since Bucky and Sam weren’t here for the previous heists, let’s go over the mechanics: Loki and I will pick our teams to help us carry out our plans for the heist, either he or I will secure the hallowed object, and whoever has the object by midnight wins the heist and is hailed as the Ultimate Avenger-slash-Genius.”

 

“Huh,” Sam mumbles.  “So this is what y’all do.”

 

“Should’ve moved in sooner,” Bucky mutters.

 

Steve is curious.  “Loki shouldn’t use magic, right?”

 

Tony glances at Loki, who bows slightly at Steve.

 

“Captain, I assure you I never planned on using it.”

 

“You really have changed, huh…” Tony muses.  He turns to Ara, a glint in his eyes.  “Whatever you’re doing with him, keep doing it.  It’s clearly working if it turned him on over to the light side.”

 

“A-ha!”  Ara squeaks, embarrassed.  “There’s the Tony I know.”

 

“I never left.  Tonight, we’ll attempt to secure”—Tony presses a button on the side of the coffee table; the top hisses open in 2 parts, revealing a secret compartment where a black soft-leather briefcase rests—“this.”

 

He lifts the briefcase from the compartment and closes the table, the top emitting another hiss as the halves rejoin.  He inputs the code on the lock of the case and grabs the only item inside.

 

“This year’s hallowed object is this glorious crown.”  Tony holds up a plastic golden crown encrusted with plastic jewels before replacing it in the briefcase.  He resets the code and fishes a padlock from his pocket, double-locking the briefcase. “The crown will remain in the briefcase which we’ll lock in the holding cell where it’ll be safe, until retrieved.”

 

“A holding cell?” Clint asks no one.

 

“For me,” Bruce replies.  “It’s on my floor.  A containment room with strong synthetic walls—Ara developed the material.  If ever the other guy comes out when I’m in the Tower, I’ll go in there and tire him out ‘til he leaves.”

 

“Correct,” Tony says, addressing Bruce.  “And since it’s on your floor, would you kindly bring the briefcase to the cell?  Don’t want to intrude.”

 

Bruce walks over and takes the briefcase from Tony.  He marches off, coffee in one hand and case in the other.

 

“Oh, one more thing!”  Tony exclaims, facing Loki.  “I’m gonna choose to believe that you won’t use magic, so in return, I promise not to use any of my… higher-tech gadgets  _ and  _ I’ll disarm my override capability over the holding cell.  We play unarmed, which means no using JARVIS for help, too.”

 

“Shake on it?”  Loki extends a hand.

 

“Shake on it.”  Tony shakes Loki’s hand firmly.  They face the team.  “You may have the honor of first pick.”

 

Ara’s excitement skyrockets.  She’s been ready for this year’s heist since last Halloween.  As caretaker, she loves the heist since it’s such an engaging team-building activity.  As a person, she likes to have fun.  Someday she knows that she and her crafty engineering mind will have their own heist plans, but for now, she’s more than happy to just participate.  And with her boss and her boyfriend playing, it’s a win-win whichever team she’s on.

 

“Alright,” Loki accepts.  “I pick... Steven.”

 

Ara blinks nowhere as Steve joins Loki upfront.  She mutters to herself, “Okay. The tactician, makes sense.”

 

“Thor.”  Tony’s pick makes Loki snap to him.  Whatever, Loki will adjust.

 

Meanwhile, Ara’s blinking has quickened.  “Okay, right, can’t have 2 gods on the same team.”

 

“Clint, I pick you,” says Loki.

 

Ara’s eyebrows furrow.

 

“Bruce,” Tony says.  “Whenever he comes back.”

 

Loki squints at him.  “You sent him off with the briefcase.  How do I know that wasn’t a trick?”

 

“You tell me, god of mischief.”

 

The 2 exchange a long look.  Tony’s telling the truth.

 

“Okay.”  Loki breaks away first, then nods at Bucky.  “James.”

 

“Nat.”

 

Ara turns to Sam, confused, while Sam turns to her because he feels the need to mirror her.  A dark cloud looms over Ara as the terrifying question begs to be asked: Is she going to be picked last?  She watches Tony and Loki with bated breath.

 

Loki turns to Tony.  “Well, I refuse to use my magic but I  _ am _ still the god of mischief.  Please, you pick another, for peace of mind.”

 

“Oooh, I like the look of generous on you, Loki guy.”  Tony doesn’t miss a beat.  “I’ll go with Sam.”

 

Ara’s dark cloud rumbles.  She’s the only person left on the couch, the loneliness crawling up her body.  There’s a weight on her chest that she can’t push off.

 

She clears her throat, forces a smile, and stands.  “Okay, that leaves me with Loki.  Cool, I’m excited—”

 

“Darling, hold on a second.”  Loki stops her. The flash of panic that crosses Ara’s features almost rattles him.  Almost.  “I’m sorry, but you’re Stark’s assistant.  If you were on my team, I’m not certain I’d have your utmost loyalty.”

 

“Uh... What—”  She shakes her head, turning to Tony.

 

Tony clucks his tongue.  “No can do, sweet summer child.  You and Loki are smooching. That’s dangerous for my plans.  I can’t risk it.”

 

The dark cloud above Ara thunders.  “ _ What?! _ ”

 

Both competitors give her apologetic looks.

 

“But I’m the only one without a team!” she protests.  The expression on her face has gone from panicked to indignant.

 

“There’s just too much at stake here, Ara.  Sorry, babe, but you’re out.”

 

Tony lays it down as gently as he can.  It only ticks off Ara more.

 

The man of iron turns to the god of mischief.  “By midnight, whoever has the crown shall be the king of the Tower.”

 

They shake hands once more, unaware that Ara is majorly hurt, and pissed.

 

Loki turns to the rest of the lounge.  “Let the heist… BEGIN!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: Heist time, or Everyone has ears.


	3. Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get an earpiece, you get an earpiece, everyone gets an earpiece!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the actual heist doesn't begin until the next chapter sjdjsjdj sorry! enjoy tho.

Ara is  _ fuming _ .  A giant lump the size of betrayal from both her boss  _ and _ her boyfriend is lodged in her throat.  They really left her out like that? Just because she’s, what,  _ connected _ to both of them?  And to do all of that in front of the team… 

 

Ara’s not sad but she  _ is _ hurt.  It’s just a heist!  A once-a-year thing!  Sure it’s fun but neither Tony nor Loki had to embarrass her like that.  Ara gulps and bites back a sob that’s threatening to come out.  She feels like she’s back in middle school P.E., the last to be picked for a team in every sport, but worse.

 

The teams march off with a purpose to their selected home-bases.  Bruce has returned and jogs over to Team Tony when Tony waves him over.  They are heading towards the open kitchen while Team Loki is on their way out of the lounge.  Ara is still mulling on her emotions—a mix of chagrin and disappointment with a splash of mild anger—when she spots Tony.  Taking a deep breath, she strides over to him.

 

“Tony!” she calls, making him turn around.  She takes another deep breath to calm herself.  “I… I just wanted to say, what you did back there really hurt my feelings.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

 

Ara sighs, glad that Tony understands.  “Yes, well, I did. It doesn’t feel great to be left out…  _ But _ if you let me join your team right now, I promise you we will win this heist.”

 

“What a nice proposition,” Tony replies blandly.  Then, he points and glares at Ara’s chest.  “If I  _ believed  _ you!  Ha-ha, I  _ got _ you, Loki!”

 

“What the—” Ara backs away, horrified.  That's  _ not _ what she was expecting.  “Why are you yelling at my chest?!”

 

“Because I know there’s a camera in there somewhere because I know you’re actually working for Loki!”  Tony accuses adamantly.  He squints at Ara as though he’s actually onto something.  “You’re not fooling me,  _ lover of Loki _ .  He may be a trickster but I’m smart.  I will not be fooled!  Not tonight!”

 

Ara stands aghast as Tony swaggers away.  Frozen, she watches him head to the kitchen, but she knocks herself awake to turn away.  She can’t bear to look at him.  That is... so  _ RIDICULOUS! _  That is uncalled for!  She tells him the truth and he yells at her...chest?  And, seriously, “ _ lover of Loki _ ”?  As if that’s  _ all  _ she is.

 

The urge to scream expletives claws at Ara when a sharp cackle erupts behind her, followed by a terrified yelp.  She snaps to the sound: Tony set off the witch he put there himself and got scared.  And then she catches something in the corner of her eye…

 

Loki and his team are at the way end of the long hallway that leads to the lounge.  Ara’s eagle-sharp focus zeroes in on Loki. He has a finger on his ear, wincing like he had something stuck in there.  Or like he heard something that pierced his eardrum.  Finally, he relaxes, facing his 3 team members.

 

His voice, deep and low, floats towards Ara.  “…will be on Steven’s floor…”

 

_ Loki’s team will be camping at Steve’s. _  Ara straightens.  _  Interesting. _

 

For some reason, something inside her is urging her to look back at Tony’s team.  As repulsed as she is, her finding out a tidbit of Loki’s plan is making her feel…significant.  Like she’s seeing things from the outside, in a different light, and the teams can’t see her watching them.

 

So she turns around again, as inconspicuous as possible, to watch Tony’s team.  If she decides to strip then and there, they wouldn’t notice at all. Bruce, Sam, Thor, and Nat are standing around the kitchen island, earnestly speaking with another—nothing important, just making conversation while Tony pours himself a glass of water.  They’re all too engrossed in their conversation and water-pouring to notice that Ara is still in the room.

 

Ara’s eyebrows shoot up, realizing at last what she was meant to glean from this team.  On the cuff of Tony’s right sleeve, camouflaged in the pitch blackness of the fabric, is a dot.  A bug. Tiny enough to blend in with the color but obviously not hidden enough for Ara to notice it.  She puts 2 and 2 together: Loki planted a bug on Tony and he was wincing because he heard the witch’s cackle, too,  _ through an earpiece _ .

 

A new emotion sweeps everything else from Ara’s mind.  Mischief has befriended her, and all she did was stand in one spot long enough to hear what needed to be heard, to see what needed to be seen.  She’s not yet sure about what to do with the information she’s got, but she's got them…and neither team knows.

 

Ara leaves the lounge.  It seems it’s time to do what she does best: engineering.

 

 

 

 

“Alright, Tony.”  Sam crosses his arms.  “What’ve you got?  How do you plan on taking down Loki?”

 

Bruce sips his coffee.  “I’m still kind of reeling from all that earlier, I wasn’t expecting him to play.”

 

“Oh, no need to worry, big guy,” Tony replies.  His voice is cool, calm, confident.  He turns to his team, a glass of water in hand.  “Doesn’t matter who volunteered, my plan is foolproof.”

 

“Don’t you think you’re being a little too confident?” Nat poses.  “Thor had a point: Loki is full of tricks. That’s who he is.”

 

“Ah, but see”—Tony sets his water down and removes his beanie—“Loki doesn’t know that I have this.”

 

Inside the beanie is a folded-up piece of paper.  He tosses it to the island’s marble counter top. Thor unfolds the paper, not before glancing at Tony quite warily.  He, Sam, and Nat begin to pore over every word on it.  Slowly, clarity takes hold of their visage.

 

“I’ve been planning for this year’s heist for a while.  In fact I told Bruce my plans way before Halloween.”  Tony downs half the glass of water.  “Everything you need to know is on that piece of paper.”

 

“Wait, wait, wait.”  Bruce sets his coffee down.  “Tony, you  _ typed _ it up?  Got the file somewhere on a desktop waiting to be hacked?”

 

Nat squints at the letters on the paper.   “No, Tony used a typewriter.”

 

Tony wiggles his eyebrows at Bruce.

 

“Okay.  Fine.  Smart.”

 

Tony goes to one of the kitchen cabinets above the sink.  From the back, he takes a can of pineapples that he emptied out and brings it to the island.  Turning it upside down to reveal the open bottom, he reaches in and takes a small plastic packet carrying several tiny black oval-shaped buttons.

 

“These are your earpieces,” he explains as he hands them out.  “Have them on you at all times so I can give you instructions from here as the night goes by.”

 

While everyone else wears their piece, Thor is carefully reading the plans.  He furrows his eyebrows when he’s halfway down the paper.

 

“It says here ‘TBD’.”  He looks at Tony.  “You didn’t plan for the entire heist.”

 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t because I  _ can’t _ .  Unexpected things may happen along the way and I can’t know those things ahead of time, but with our brains and brawn put together, I  _ know _ we’ll still win.”

 

“Ehhh.”  Sam tilts his head at the paper with certainty.  “Still sounds cocky.”

 

“And rightfully so.”  Tony gulps the last bit of his water.  “We have a solid plan, a solid team, and Loki is a fool to volunteer for the heist.  This year’s heist—”

  
  


 

 

“— _ is OURS! _ ”

 

Loki lowers the volume on the radio that he quickly grabbed from the spare room on Ara’s floor before heading to Steve’s lounge.  He looks up at Steve, Bucky, and Clint who are seated on the couch adjacent from him. There is a bright sharpness behind Loki’s eyes.  He really does wear mischief well.

 

“Yes,” he drawls mockingly, “ _ I’m _ the fool.”

 

“You bugged Tony?” asks Steve.  He’s quite stirred, but he’s not going to admit it.  “When?”

 

“Remember when he promised all those things he won’t do during the heist, and I made him shake on it?”

 

All 3 of Loki’s team members nod at the same time when they get it.

 

“Okay.  Useful,” Clint nods along, “but we didn’t hear their  _ plans _ .”

 

“But we do know now that Tony’s way in over his head.”  Loki stands from the couch he was on and heads over to a display case nearby.  “Like a good player, he’ll be focused on executing his plans and trying to win, and as you heard whatever is on that paper is only the jumping-off point for the night.  So everything we truly need, we’ll  _ hear _ later.”

 

The people on the couch watch Loki rummage inside the display case, the one beside the gramophone Pepper got Steve for white elephant a few years ago, where framed photos and others of Steve’s mementos are arranged.  Of everyone else, Steve is the most curious, because this is his space so why does Loki seem so familiar with it?  Then it dawns on him.

 

“You’ve  _ planned _ for this heist for a while too.”

 

Bucky raises his brows.  “Here I thought it was spontaneous.”

 

“I’ve known everything I needed to do since the beginning of the year.”  Loki stretches his arm all the way to the back of the case.  “Where is that damned thing…— Ah, yes!  Here they are.”

 

In his hand is a small metallic case the size of a Tic-Tac dispenser.  As he returns to the couch, Steve and Bucky exchange looks, fully unaware that they’re both extremely uncomfortable that Loki somehow intruded on their floor.  Steve thinks back to whichever day he was absent that Loki could’ve sneaked in; Bucky wonders if he was present when he did.

 

Loki breaks their thoughts when he presents to them the case.  He opens it to reveal 3 tiny transparent earplugs.

 

“Earpieces,” Loki says.  “I’m really not surprised that Tony is using them, too, but these are equipped with microphones, and he’s the one who’s bugged.”

 

“How do you know  _ you _ ’re not bugged?” Bucky questions.

 

“You heard Thor,” Loki says simply.  “I’m the god of lies, mischief. You can’t trick the god of tricks.”

 

Steve stares at his earpiece.  “Thought we couldn’t use tech.”

 

Loki laughs.  “These are just earpieces.  Plus, it’s Tony who swore he won’t use higher-tech gadgets.   _ I _ made no promises.”

 

Steve purses his lips, because Loki’s right, and Steve isn’t sure whether to be repulsed or impressed.

 

“Okay, guy.  Been a while since I did your deeds.”  Clint leans back on the couch.  “What’s the plan?”

 

A dark grin slowly spreads across Loki’s face.  Gone is the soft, affectionate, easygoing man who couldn’t keep his hands away from Ara.  The Loki in front of them now is the one they know and, frankly, the one that they’re more comfortable with.  They lean in, ready to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: Heist time, for real.


	4. To the Tune of the 'Mission: Impossible' Theme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heisting!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is LONG but it's because we get to see both teams' plans unravel.

The elevator ride from the main lounge to Bruce’s floor is 7 seconds long.  Sam has barely matched the rhythm of his humming to the elevator music when the elevator halts.  “ _Dr. Bruce Banner_ ,” a disembodied voice announces.  The doors open, revealing a wide and relatively long hallway that sharply turns left to Bruce’s floor.

 

As far as architecture goes, it looks the same as any of the other Avengers’ floors.  Even the long hallway and the sharp left turn is the same pathway in those other levels.  But that’s about all the similarities they share.

 

Sam finds himself standing in a pretty bare lounge.  As far as the Avengers’ floors, he’s only ever been on Steve’s, but even Steve’s muted simplicity can’t compete with how _stripped_ Bruce’s floor feels.  A few poster prints hang on the walls; some sleek science-y decorations are displayed on thin tables scattered throughout the room.  A large chunk of the left wall is a built-in bookshelf overflowing with books. The ceiling is raised higher here, invoking a feeling of smallness within Sam, a 6-footer.

 

The first door on the right is Bruce’s bedroom, as the first door on the right on the floors of the other Avengers is the bedroom.  The door after it is typically the spare bedroom, but through its glass walls, Sam gleans that Bruce’s spare room has been renovated to be his personal office.  So the last door on the right must be the holding cell.

 

Phase 1 of Tony’s plan: Guard the briefcase.  He assigned it to Sam, whose eyes he trusts.

 

When Sam opens the door, he smirks.

 

“I see you were sent to guard the case, too,” Sam says by way of greeting.

 

Bucky doesn’t even look at him.  “Which is what I intend to do.”

 

7 floors above them in the main lounge, Tony’s focus is on nothing but Bucky’s voice.  Of course, Loki also sent someone to watch the briefcase.  Tony presumed he would.  Sam and Bucky have an interesting rapport: they could be the best of friends one moment, bitter rivals the next.  Both were trained to be impossibly perceptive, to think with calculation but react quickly.  Interestingly, they’re the ones watching the briefcase.

 

Nevertheless, it’s time for Phase 2: Distraction.

 

“Alright, Bruce, you know what to do.”  Tony nods at Bruce before the man leaves.  Into the mic of the audio set-up he put together on the kitchen island, he instructs Sam.  “Bruce is on his way down there, Sammy.  Keep Bucky engaged.”

 

Thor eyes Tony curiously.  “Are you sure the Hulk won’t show up?”

 

“I _know_ he won’t show up,” Tony replies.  “Bruce’s hold on the other guy is better than we know.  Plus, this won’t be a _real_ stressor.”

 

“A stressor, nonetheless,” Nat mutters.

 

Bruce’s audio crackles a bit.  “Better keep it quiet up there.  The other guy might be listening.”

 

Thor and Nat give Tony a pointed look.  Tony shakes his head at them.

 

“We believe in you, Bruce,” he says, adjusting the radio.

 

Bruce takes a deep breath as he strolls into his own lounge.  He reminds himself that this is only going to be an act, nothing real or endangering, not a reason to Hulk out.  But even as he repeats those words over and over in his head, it still feels like he’s saying it to someone else.

 

May a Halloween heist not be the reason for a multi million-dollar renovation.

 

Bruce slams open the door to the holding cell.  “WHAT THE _HELL_ , WILSON?!”

 

Bucky jumps at the sound of the steel door slamming on concrete wall, the sudden sight of Bruce, the hardened tone of his voice.  His eyes briefly widen when he sees the look on Bruce’s face.  Sam, on the other hand, knows that this is part of the plan, but he has never really seen Bruce angry.  And since the hulk is the manifestation of his anger… Sam’s confidence in the second phase slips just a bit.

 

Sam feigns his best confused face.  “What’s… goin’ on, Bruce?  Why’re we yelling?”

 

“You absolute—” Bruce huffs, his curls drooping over his forehead.  “You know I’ve been nothing but nice to you ever since you got on this team but _this_?  This is the last straw.”

 

“What are you talking about, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

 

“You _KNOW_ what I’m talking about, you _backstabber!_  I thought we were friends!”

 

Bucky glances between the 2 men in front of him.  “Um… What the hell?”

 

Now the holding cell is a large room in volume.  But when designing Bruce’s floor, Tony took the Hulk’s height, cut it by a few inches, and slapped the dimensions on the height of the holding cell.  Yes, overall, Bruce’s floor is _taller_ than the other Avengers’, but the holding cell is shorter than the Hulk to limit the space he can vertically move around.  Length- and width-wise, he gets plenty of space to get tired in.

 

The holding cell itself is sectioned off from the rest of the room, which leaves a 5-foot wide aisle where the entrance is.  It’s also 100% soundproof.  A door with a small window on the right cell wall connects the cell to Bruce’s office.  A strip of 2-way mirror lines the front-face of the cell, a way for Ara and/or the rest of the team to know if Bruce has returned.

 

Right now, the briefcase is cuffed to the center of a table inside the cell.

 

Right now, Bucky’s attention is completely not on the briefcase.

 

Helplessly and quite nervously, he’s trying to stop Sam and Bruce from arguing any further.  Any other person could be arguing with Sam right now and he wouldn’t even bat an eyelash (or maybe he would, it depends), but pissed-off Bruce is giving him Hulk flashbacks.  And maybe it’s the light, but he swears he can see Bruce’s neck veins turn green.

 

“Guys… Guys, please stop arguing—”

 

Bruce pokes Sam in the chest so hard Sam staggers back.  “You have the _gall_ to go behind my back and—and _betray_ me?!  For what?!  What did I do—”

 

“I _didn’t_ stab you in the back, man, I never betrayed you!  I don’t know who told you that but they—”

 

“I’ve had about _enough_ of you, Wilson!  The only thing holding me back from punching—”

 

“Hey!  No punching, no beating, no fighting!”  Bucky tries to step in.  He’s so confused.  “What the hell is happening?!”

 

In the main lounge, Tony is laughing so hard he’s about to pee his pants.  Phase 2 is turning out to be so much better than planned.  Sam and Bucky are amazing actors and Bucky’s main objective now is to prevent the Hulk from coming out.  He won’t, of course, but at least Bucky’s no longer watching the briefcase.

 

Time for Phase 3: Retrieve the crown.

 

As soon as Bruce slammed the door open and began yelling at Sam for nothing, Tony sent Thor and Nat to Bruce’s floor.  With a weapon-equipped harness, a long rope, and a bag of other tools, the 2 fighters tiptoed into Bruce’s office and set up shop quietly behind the door to the holding cell.

 

There’s a sturdy, large mahogany bookshelf next to that door.  Standing on it, Thor jimmied open a ceiling tile. Natasha put on the harness while Thor attached the rope to it, then Thor got down while Nat got up.  She pulled herself up gracefully into the opening, crawled through the vent, found the tile Tony somehow marked a while back, and jimmied that open too.

 

Bucky is still stuck in the middle of Sam and Bruce’s argument.  It’s escalated to a few shoves, more chest-poking, and louder yelling.  He’s definitely convinced that the lower half of Bruce’s neck is green.

 

Gently, while watching Bucky through the window, Thor lowers Nat into the cell.  She unsheathes a knife from the harness, stabs through the soft leather of the briefcase, and takes the crown.  Bucky’s back is to the 2-way mirror so he can’t see Nat in the cell or Thor in the office, and he didn’t hear Nat either.  Sam and Bruce, however, can see Nat as she turns the briefcase over to its un-stabbed side and is pulled up back into the vent.

 

Tony is tapping his foot uncontrollably, eager to know whether Phase 3 is succeeding or not.  “I should’ve given them mics too,” he mutters.

 

About 35 seconds later, Natasha and Thor come running into the main lounge.

 

Tony leaves the kitchen.  “Where is it?  Did you get it?”

 

Nat and Thor share a smug grin as they huff and puff from the rush and adrenaline.  Nat fishes out the crown from the tool-bag and hands it to Tony.

 

“’Course we did.”  She smirks, dropping the bag at his feet before heading to the kitchen.

 

Tony can’t contain his joy.  He shouts in triumph before running to the mic.

 

“Sam, Bruce, we have the crown!”

 

Sam and Bruce are in the middle of yelling empty insults in each other’s faces when Tony’s good news crackles through their earpieces.

 

“FINE!”  Sam exclaims all of a sudden.  “I APOLOGIZE EVEN THOUGH I DID NOTHING!”

 

“OKAY, FINE!”  Bruce backs off from him.  “THAT’S ALL I NEEDED TO HEAR!”

 

The scientist marches off and out of the cell.  Bucky releases a big breath he’s been holding for several minutes.  This entire time, Loki hasn’t said a single thing into his earpiece, so he’s completely in the air by himself and has chosen not to check if Loki has been listening lest he reveal they have earpieces.  What matters, though, is that Bruce didn’t turn.

 

“Damn, man, what was all that?” he manages.

 

Sam shakes his head.  “Glad that’s over.”

 

They look away from the door and return their attention to the briefcase.  Untouched, unmoved, unscathed.

 

“Where do we hide the crown?” Nat asks Tony.

 

Tony looks around the lounge before his eyes settle on one spot.  “The coffee table.”

 

“Unguarded?”  Thor questions.

 

“It’ll be safe there,” Tony says as he heads to the table.  It hisses when he opens it.  “We’ll be here the whole time.”

  
  


 

“Poor, poor Tony.”  Loki shakes his head in fake sympathy.

 

Steve draws his eyebrows together.  “You seem awfully unaffected.”

 

“Obviously.  I’ve told you my plan.”

 

“You stared at us for a minute and all you said was ‘Wait’ then stared at us some more,” Clint says, confused and exasperated.  “Then you told Bucky to go watch the briefcase and… That's it.”

 

The 3 of them are seated on the adjacent couches, still in Steve’s lounge.  They heard Tony instructing his team, the clamor in the holding cell, his victorious shout at the successful retrieval of the crown.  Loki had the mic switched off the entire time.  When Bruce and Sam started arguing, Steve almost went down there to defuse the tension, but Loki stopped him.  “This is part of Tony’s plan,” he said. “It’s best we don’t interfere.  They need to know that Bucky is genuinely distracted.”  With that, for the second time tonight, Loki was right.  In Steve’s opinion, it’s getting irksome.

 

“You're impatient, Barton,” Loki replies.  “The plan is at work even as we speak.”

 

Steve leans forward.  “So we _wanted_ them to have the crown?”

 

“No,” says Loki, “but now that they have it, our plan will move along better than once presumed.”

 

“Again,” Clint interjects, “ _what_ plan?  ‘Cause it’s, what, past 9 o’clock, they have the crown, and ‘waiting’ really hasn’t—”

 

Clint doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Loki stands up from the couch he’s on and marches off to Steve’s art studio.  Steve’s jaw drops as they watch Loki walk confidently inside like he owns the place.  How many times has he been to his floor?  Steve’s about to snap at him for invasion of privacy when he comes out with a folded shirt in hand.

 

Wait, no.  Not a shirt.

 

“Is that…?”  Clint trails off.

 

“Oh my—”  Steve stands abruptly.  “You _stole_ Ara’s suit?”

 

“What?  No, I borrowed it,” Loki defends himself, walking past him to Clint.  “I’ll return it after the heist.”

 

“Loki, does she _know_ you took her suit for the heist?”  Steve demands.  “You leave her out of it then you take her stuff?”

 

Loki glances at him in the corner of his eyes.  “I’ve already got one annoying brother, Rogers.  I will return the suit, I promise.”

 

Steve’s nostrils flare a little.  He’s giving Loki his signature eyebrows of disappointment, but he backs down, giving Loki the benefit of the doubt since Loki hasn’t given him a reason not to trust him.  Man.  What is happening in the world?

 

“As for you, Barton, this part of the plan is yours.”  Loki hands him Ara’s suit.  “Should be fun.”

 

“I… wear this?”  Clint stares at Loki incredulously.  Loki nods.  “How is this gonna fit me, dude?”

 

“Trust me, it will.”  Loki claps his hand and faces Steve and Clint.  “I admit I have been secretive about the plan, and you are my team so you deserve to know.  So, here it goes.”

  
  


 

Ara was in the lab for nearly an hour.  Situated between the Avengers’ floors, the lab is both her workplace and solace at times of crises.  Highly unlucky for her, this is a crisis. Her friends are above her having fun, going about the Halloween heist as usual, while she was down in the lab, feeling like how a water bottle gets when it’s been left in a hot car for weeks.

 

Still, her being in the lab wasn’t spent on just moping.  She worked to tap into the frequency of the bug on Tony, which could have been difficult without the bug itself… Difficult, but not impossible, especially with JARVIS and the laboratory on her side.  Plus it wasn’t like anyone was watching her.

 

It just so happened that the bug Loki used is Stark tech, a single-traffic gadget that’s interconnected with the deep network where JARVIS “lives”.  What’s more, Ara knows the design of the bug, courtesy of her _needing_ to learn the basics of Tony’s designs when she first became his assistant.  When she finally tuned into the bug’s frequency, she heard Tony give his team earpieces.  The next move was to tap into the audio of those earpieces, but when she asked JARVIS about their make, the AI said they weren’t Stark tech.  Then she thought, _Why not just hijack the surveillance feed?_  So she did.

 

Unfortunately, the surveillance system in the main lounge and the 7 Avenger floors doesn’t catch audio, but the visual is beautifully crystal clear.  She watched Bruce march into his lounge and engage in a verbal altercation with Sam, obviously for no reason: if it were real, Sam wouldn’t have argued back.  She also saw Thor and Nat do their little stunt—super impressive, which bummed Ara out even more that she wasn’t a part of it.  The entire time, Loki’s team sans Bucky stayed put; Steve wanted to go down there but Loki stopped him.  When Tony placed the crown in the coffee table, Ara scoffed and left the lab.

 

Now, Ara's in her room, in bed, squeezing and un-squeezing a stress ball.  At the risk of falling asleep, she stayed in her blouse and jeans, facing the window.

 

She groans, tossing the stress ball to the floor.

 

Above and around her, JARVIS comes to life.  “ _Are you alright, Miss Ara?”_

 

Ara rolls over on her stomach.  “Yes.”

 

“ _Shall I request for Mr. Laufeyson—_ ”

 

“No!” she bellows as best as she can.  “No Loki, no anyone, I’m… okay.  I'm just bummed.  I'll get over it.”

 

Here's what’s going through Ara’s head right now:   _I’m still mad at Loki for leaving me out, I don’t wanna see him.  But I also weirdly miss him even though he's just two floors above me… Frickin’ Tony, yelling at my boobs?!… I'm UPSET!  And I'm upset I feel upset about all this! It's_ just _the heist... I feel like I know all their plans.  Bugs, earpieces… What do I do with what I know?...  I'm sad and tired, maybe I should just nap…_

 

For about 30 more minutes, she cycles through that thought process.  She’ll get over all of it, but not now.

  
  


 

Loki’s plan is straight-up _beautiful_.  It's so tight that when he was telling Steve and Clint about it, Steve involuntarily dropped him a compliment that sounds exactly like “This plan is genius” long before he even caught himself thinking it.  He's right, though.  Loki, for all he is, does not disappoint with this heist plan.  It seems that all the planets in the universe are aligning right behind Loki, too, because while his plan doesn't call for SHIELD requesting Nat and Thor’s presence at their Manhattan headquarters, that's exactly what has happened.

 

Via the bug on Tony’s sleeve, Loki’s team heard Natasha tell Tony that Agent Maria Hill needs her and Thor immediately.  “What for?” Tony asked.  “She needs Thor to I.D. an audio surveillance SHIELD got from space, and she needs me for another case she didn't say,” Natasha replied.  “Hill can send the audio and the case info over here,” Tony reasoned.  The answer was obviously no, because Nat and Thor left anyway.  Right now, Team Tony is down to 3 people, one of which is still in the cell “guarding” an empty briefcase.

 

Loki hands Steve a case file and a book.  The file consists of 5 pieces of paper, and the book is about quantum physics written by Bruce for one of his PhDs.  Of course, Loki took out both materials somewhere from Steve’s art studio.

 

“They distracted one of our men so we distract them as well,” Loki says.  He stays on his feet, hands clasped behind his back.  “There is a gaping contradiction in one of Banner’s theories about quantum physics.  He doesn't know about it, but I'm older and wiser than him and Midgardian science is further behind from Asgard’s.  I _could_ tell him everything I know, of course, but I’m not here to drive a good man mad.”

 

With the book in his lap, Steve reads through the papers in the case file.  He's not as much of a science aficionado as Bruce or Tony or even Bucky, but the information on the papers keep raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes.  It's not close to learning the answers to Life’s Biggest Questions, but definitely enough to rattle any human person.

 

“You, Rogers, will speak to Banner about his mistake,” Loki instructs.  “Bring the file with you if you’d like. It should be enough to render him occupied while Barton here plays his part.”

 

“Alright, I like this plan, Loki, don't get me wrong,” Clint says, “but… are you sure _Tony_ will be distracted enough?”

 

“Absolutely,” Loki replies.  He spots the time on the clock above Steve’s gramophone: it's almost 9:45.  “Speaking of, our distraction should be here in...3...2...1.”

 

“ _Pepper?_ ”

 

“ _Yes, Tony, it's me.  Why do you look surprised?  I told you I was stopping by_.”

 

Loki’s grin is as bright as the full moon outside.

 

In the main lounge, Tony is as pale as the moon.  At first he thinks that he's hallucinating Pepper, he _has_ been missing her, but there’s no mistaking the kiss she gives him.  She's real, alright, and she's here in the Tower.  On Halloween.  During the heist.

 

“Hey— Hey, Pepper,” Bruce manages to greet.  He's just as surprised as Tony; it's a miracle he didn't drop his coffee when she walked in.

 

“Bruce!  It’s so good to see you,” Pepper smiles at him kindly.  “It's been a minute, hasn't it?”

 

Tony is still frozen to his spot on the kitchen island.  He hasn't even gotten up from the stool he's on.

 

Pepper holds Tony’s face worriedly.  “Tony, you look… like you’ve seen a ghost.  Are you sick?”

 

“I— I—” Tony stammers.  He slaps himself mentally to get it together.  “What— Why are you here?”

 

“What do you mean, ‘ _why_ ’ am I here?”  Pepper scoffs, amused.  She sets her handbag on the counter before grabbing a mug from a cabinet.  Tony and Bruce’s eyes are on her. “I called your office, I left several voicemails.  At one point I even dialed Happy by accident.”

 

“I… haven’t been to my office at all.”  Tony jumps from the stool.  “It's Halloween, dear, _why_ are you _here_?  Right now?”

 

Pepper stops.  She swivels around to face Tony.  “You guys are doing another one of your Halloween heists.”

 

“Sweetheart, the heist is—”

 

“I mean I understand it's a very fun thing, a nice way for team-building—”

 

“—And I would’ve been in my office but it _is_ a Saturday—”

 

“— _Oh_ , I should've _known_ when I walked in and got a whiff of all the vanilla—”

 

Just then, a rattled Steve comes jogging into the lounge.  In one hand, he has a small book and several pieces of paper in a tight grip.  Tony isn't facing the entryway and his voice is overlapping with Pepper, so he doesn't see nor hear Steve when he calls for Bruce.

 

“Steve?”  Bruce’s stance is weirdly defensive.  “What are you doing here?  We’re heisting.”

 

“I know, I know,” Steve huffs.  He raises the book for Bruce to see.  “But this… This is urgent.”

 

He enters the kitchen just as Pepper and Tony move their ultra fast-paced bickering from the kitchen to the lounge.  The couple has enabled one another to speak in complete sentences instead of chopped replies and they're engrossed.  Meanwhile, Steve shows Bruce a passage in his own book about a theory of his.  Bruce pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he reads.

 

“Yes, I remember this.  I submitted the theory in a paper to the top physics journal in the country before it made the book; they said it was… ‘revolutionary’, or something.”

 

“Right, you got an award for it.  Well”—Steve takes a dramatic deep breath before handing the papers to Bruce—”you need to look at these.”

 

Bruce furrows his eyebrows at Steve before taking the papers.  He begins to read slowly… Then his eyes rake across the words on the papers so rapidly that Steve gets scared.  Bruce’s face is somewhere between perplexity and apprehension.  Loki may have only wanted to distract Bruce but if the scientist is frustrated by his own slip-up that he couldn't have known for another hundred years... Oh, boy.

 

“This is— This is _amazing_ ,” Bruce breathes wistfully.  He looks up at Steve in a daze.  “W- Where did you find all this— How—”

 

While Steve tumbles over his words in explaining the counter-theory’s origins, while Bruce gawks at him with starry eyes filled with childlike wonder, while Pepper and Tony reduce their bickering to sticky flirtation that would make Ara cringe until her neck looks like a crushed soda can, Clint Barton enters the lounge with ease.

 

Clint is wearing Ara’s suit which, like Loki said, clings to his body just right.  With the suit’s cloaking mode on, he successfully approaches the coffee table without alerting Tony or Bruce.  For a moment he lets his hands roam over the suit, admiring its quality and tech.  He's thinking he might want to upgrade his own ‘fit.

 

Anyway, the heist.

 

Clint doesn't know how Steve knows, but just as the coffee table starts to hiss, Steve knocks over Bruce’s coffee and sends it crashing against the floor.  All attention is on the shards of ceramic; they're all working to pick up every piece as Steve rants a string of apologies.

 

Meanwhile, Clint has taken the crown and tucked it inside the suit.  The suit reshapes itself to accommodate for the bulk without making it uncomfortable for Clint.  He presses the button to close the table.  Again, just when it hisses, Steve manages to create another distraction: He bumps his head against edge of the kitchen island on purpose.

 

“Steve!”  Pepper yelps, genuinely concerned.  “Steve, are you okay?!”

 

The super soldier winces and groans.  “I- I'm okay— I'm fine—”

 

Tony stands.  “I got ice, hold on.”

 

By the time Tony opens the freezer, Clint has turned the corner from the lounge.  He dashes to the elevator, one hand over the crown.  He turns off cloaking only when he’s back on Steve’s floor.

 

“Ah, yes, Barton!”  Loki rejoices when he sees Clint waving the crown in the air.  “A formidable spy, you are, _truly_ a force to be reckoned with!”

 

“Hell yeah, I am.”  Clint is smug.  He hands the crown to Loki.  “Here, take care of it.  I’ll change back into my clothes and return Ara’s suit.”

 

The crown is plastic but it feels regal in Loki’s hands.  He can kiss it right now but he's not going to, it’s unsanitary.  Around the corner from the long hallway, Steve emerges with an excited grin, holding a bag of ice over his forehead.

 

“Hey!”  Steve shouts in a sharp whisper.  “Bruce took the book and the papers, he wants to look at it further.  Did we get it?!”

 

Loki brandishes the crown above his head, a large smile plastered on his face

 

“ _Yes!_ ”  Steve nearly jumps.  “Oh, that makes the searing pain in my head worth it.”

 

“Yes, I am sorry about that,” Loki says, nodding at the ice-pack.  He lets Steve handle the crown for a bit.  “That caught me by surprise, what you did.  I must say, breaking the mug was smarter.”

 

“Yeah, well.”  Steve shrugs with a smile, handing the crown back to Loki.  “I trusted the plan.”

 

Loki accepts the hallowed object, regarding Steve.  Now it’s his turn to be impressed.

 

“Where's Clint?”  Steve plops on the couch, pressing the ice-pack harder to his forehead.

 

“Changing.”  Loki sets the crown by the radio and adjusts the mic.  “Bucky, listen carefully but remain natural.  We've got the crown, it's with us up here, but you must stay in the cell until I call you up.  Cough if you copy.”

 

A moment passes before Bucky’s coughing cuts through the speaker, followed by “ _You old fool, the Knicks aren't bad, they just need a good break_ ”.  Sam saying “ _The Knicks are past their prime and who’re you callin’ ‘old’?_ ” reaches them before Loki lowers the radio’s volume.

  
  
  


_What do I do_ … Ara muses, her left cheek plastered on her pillow.  Before the pillow leaves dent marks on her face, she pushes herself off the bed.

 

Ara sighs, glancing around her room.  It’s about half the size of her old apartment, simpler but more… her.  The walls are a light bluish grey.  Bookshelves are overstocked with every book she's ever read in every genre imaginable.  Strings of photos of her with the team hang on the wall by the door.  On the left nightstand is the novel Loki has been reading—his room is on Thor's floor but he slept in Ara's last night.  On the dresser across from the bed are framed photos of her with her family at an Oregon national park, overseas for Christmas in Japan, at her university graduation, at her grad school graduation.  And taped to the mirror above the dresser is the first photo she and Loki ever took.

 

Last year, spring.  They weren't dating yet but it was obvious Loki was harboring feelings for her.  Otherwise why did he agree to go on an impulsive trip with her to Brooklyn?  They went to a botanical garden where a cherry blossom festival is held every spring because Ara really wanted to see the cherry blossom trees, and Loki wanted to see her happy because he liked seeing her happy.

 

Slowly, Ara approaches the photo.  She and Loki were standing under a cherry blossom tree, her arm swung over his neck, pink petals in a gentle flurry all about them.  She put on a goofy expression and snapped the photo too quickly.  She was about to delete it when she saw Loki in the picture—he was gazing at her, heartrendingly soft, in pure admiration.  “You're not even looking at the camera!” she laughed nervously at it.  But they didn't do a re-take; she didn't want to.  The way Loki was looking at her, the same way he looks at her now… That was worth more than any cherry blossom they saw that day.

 

Ara sighs.  “I should talk to him.”

 

She looks around her room again.  She notices that her battle suit isn't hanging on her closet door.  Ara herself designed that suit, highly influenced by Natasha’s except the accent on Ara’s suit is gold.  That, and Ara went crazy on the suit’s tech: Cloaking mode to render invisibility, shape-morphing ability to fit on whomever wears it (for a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency scenario), and a shape-shifting option (it has a memory of various outfits so she can be wearing the suit but look like she's wearing a different set of clothes).  The suit needs energy to function so it harvests from the sun, but it does need to be charged on site too.  She figures it's probably charging in its dock in the basement, where some of Tony’s unfinished suits are chilling.

 

“JARVIS,” Ara calls out, “is Loki still on Steve’s floor?”

 

“ _Yes, Miss Ara,_ ” JARVIS responds.  “ _He is currently with Captain Rogers.  Miss Ara, I must tell you that—_ ”

 

“That's okay, JARVIS, I just need to talk to him.  Don't let him know I'll be there, though.”

 

The AI pauses before responding.  “ _Yes, Miss Ara._ ”

 

Ara thanks the AI.  She glances at the photograph once more before releasing a breath and stepping out of her room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> final chapter: Tsk-tsk-tsk.
> 
> final chapter will be posted on Halloween, 31 Oct 2018.


	5. Angry Lemons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's cologne is _too_ pungent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEDICATION (/ˌdedəˈkāSH(ə)n/): starting this fic summer of 2018 and finishing it... ON HALLOWEEN.
> 
> i extended the chapters from 5 to 7. happy early halloween ;-)

****_ One breath in, one breath out.  Okay, that's not so bad.  It’s gonna be okay.  Just talk to Loki, tell him you feel bad that you were left out, that you wanna join his team… Okay.  It's gonna be okay. _

 

Ara is about to round the corner into Steve’s lounge when she stops herself, again.

 

“ _ Ugh _ !” she groans, again.  “Come on, Ara, get it together!”

 

Seriously, why is she so nervous?  There's no reason to be anxious about  _ talking to Loki _ ; they're dating, for goodness’s sake!  Her emotions are in the right place and Loki has always been receptive to everything she tells him.  She pays attention both to his words and silences, and more often than not, they find themselves on the same page about many things.  Communication has always been one of their strong points.  It's how they became friends, how they began dating, and it's how this leaving-her-off-the-heist thing is going to be solved.

 

Taking a deep, deep breath, Ara finally strides into Steve’s lounge.

 

Loki and Steve are seated on adjacent couches speaking to each other about art.  Steve is in the middle of relaying his fine arts career pre-enlistment when he and Loki see Ara walking in.  The 2 men glance at each other before standing.

 

“Ara,” Steve says, stuffing his hands in his back pockets.  “Hello.”

 

Never has Steve greeted anyone by saying “Hello”.  Awkwardness settles upon the room as Loki and Ara stare at him.

 

“What— Uh, what are you doing here?” asks Steve.

 

“I was… wondering if I can talk to Loki,” Ara replies.  Loki turns to her, curious.  She glances at him.  “In private, if that's okay.”

 

Loki and Steve exchange a long look before Loki nods at Steve.

 

“I'll be in the studio.”  Steve smiles at Ara wryly.  “Nice to see you.”

 

Ara furrows her eyebrows at Steve’s retreating back.  When the super-soldier closes the door to his studio, Ara faces Loki.

 

“That was kinda weird,” she comments.

 

“Yes, he’s…” Loki trails off then shakes his head as if to say,  _ Let's just not speak of it _ .  “So, you wanted to speak with me.”

 

Ara takes a second to find her words.  When she does, they come out heavy, in an exhale.

 

“Listen, I, um, was in my room moping around,” she begins, “and then I saw the picture that we took together in Brooklyn last year.  At the cherry blossom fest?  Do you remember?”

 

“Like it happened only yesterday.”

 

Ara can’t help but be relieved by that.  She smiles in spite of herself.   _ See?  Things are going well _ .

 

“Okay, well,” Ara nods, nearing Loki.  “I just wanted to tell you that I feel really, really bad that you left me out of the heist.  It's weird, it's just the heist, but still. I’m upset that I can’t play, but I’m even more upset ‘cause I’m not spending Halloween... with you.”

 

Loki tilts his head down at her, a small smile tugging at his lips.

 

“I… kinda miss you.  And I know it's, like, 10 p.m., but I'm still down to play.  Let me join your team and I  _ guarantee _ you, together, we can take down Tony and win this heist.”  Ara grins. “So, what do you say?”

 

“That was beautiful, darling,” Loki says, smiling.  “I want to say I'm quite moved.  It would have worked.”

 

Wait.  What?

 

“Yes, it was almost there.”  Loki straightens himself, then leans forward a little to  _ yell at Ara’s chest _ .  “But you  _ failed _ , Stark!”

 

“What—” Ara staggers back in shock.  “Loki!  What the hell?!”

 

“I’m not a fool, Ara,” Loki declares.  “I know you and Tony are working side by side.  You’re his personal assistant, you're both Avengers, and now that we're halfway through the heist, suddenly you want to join my team?  The two of you are in  _ cahoots _ .”

 

It takes a few seconds for Loki’s words to register in Ara’s head and when it does, she explodes.

 

“ _ WHAT?! _ ”  Ara exclaims in frustration, in shock, in confusion, whichever.  “‘ _ Cahoots _ ’— Where did you even learn that—  You know what, it doesn't matter.  Loki, I’m not working with Tony!”

 

“Lies.”

 

“You both left me out of your teams and then kicked me out of the heist entirely!”

 

Loki shakes his head.  “I'm sorry, sweetheart.  I haven't changed my mind.  Do you hear me, Stark?  You fool no one!”

 

Ara’s hands are on her hips as Loki shouts at her chest.  She's pursing her lips, her nostrils flaring, eyes searching the lounge for some sense in all of this.  This is ridiculous, and their yelling at her  _ boobs _ is ridiculous.  Without a word Ara swivels on her toes and marches out of the lounge, red-faced, blood boiling.

 

When she turns the corner into the long hallway, she hears Steve’s voice.  She stops.

 

“Is she gone?”

 

“Yes, she's left.  You may come out.”

 

Ara hears Steve heave a sigh.  Making sure her shadow isn’t visible on the floor past the hallway, Ara backs herself onto the wall.   _ Wait, there are cameras here _ .  Ara pulls out her phone and pretends to text while continuing to eavesdrop.

 

“I think you're being harsh.”

 

“Am I?  I heard their little argument earlier in the main lounge, before Tony set off the witch, to throw me off and make it seem like they're not working together.  You don’t think it interesting that she barges in here when we’re halfway through the heist?  Tony set her up to it.”

 

Ara rolls her eyes but holds herself in place.

 

“Tony hasn't mentioned her name in the comms  _ and _ she's your girlfriend.”

 

A pause.  “Still, at least we have the crown.”

 

Ara gasps.   _ They do?  Since when? _

 

Steve’s voice breaks her thoughts.  “We need to hide it somewhere better.  I chucked it in the trash when we heard her out in the hallway.”

 

“Let's keep it there.  It’s the most inconspicuous spot on your floor.”

 

_ How did Loki get the crown from Tony? _  As light as air and as quiet as a cat, Ara pads over to the elevator.  She pockets her phone, mulling on what she just heard.  She's been feeling a lot this whole night, and it's just gotten way murkier.

  
  
  
  


“You’ve really invested in this heist, huh?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Tony replies.  “I’ve been planning for this for months and I wanna beat Loki bad.”

 

Pepper shakes her head, bemused.  “I won't pretend to understand what you feel.”

 

“And I won't pretend it's not crazy.”  Tony kisses her cheek.  “Call me when you're on the plane?”

 

“You know I will,” Pepper says, patting his chest before turning away.  “And check your office inbox tomorrow. 8 of those messages are mine.  Bye-bye, Bruce.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Bruce mumbles.  He's still poring over his book and the papers Steve showed him.  He’s covered both documents with so many notes that they reek of ink.

 

“Have fun!”  Pepper waves at them without looking back.

 

“Buh-bye, dear,” Tony returns.  He waits until Pepper has rounded the corner before checking with Bruce.  “Hey, did you notice she's wearing a new perfume?”

 

“Uh-uh.”

 

“I really like it.  Gives her more of a kick, if that’s even possible.  I should’ve asked her what it is so I can give her more of it for Thanksgiving, ‘cause I'm  _ thankful _ .”

 

“Hmm.”

 

Tony glances from Bruce to the papers, then from the papers to Bruce.

 

“What’cha got there, bud?”

 

“Huh?”  Bruce looks up, then realizes what Tony said.  “Oh.  Uh, physics.  Steve came in here all shaken and it's ‘cause of this.  Tony, I'm wrong about one of my theories that I got awarded for.”

 

“When did Steve suddenly become a science buff?  Thought that was Bucky’s thing.”

 

“Not sure but see, several years ago…”

 

As Bruce relays the origins of his false theory, Tony skims through the notes that Bruce has left in the margins of his book and the papers.  He quirks an eyebrow at one of the equations Bruce scribbled at the bottom of the page.  And then he freezes.

 

“Wait,” he stops Bruce mid-sentence.  “Steve came in here and brought all of this?”

 

“Yes!  Isn't it amazing?  See, my mistake was implementing the  _ wrong _ variables but insisting that the—”

 

Tony sprints to the coffee table.  It hisses open too slowly for his liking.  When the compartment is revealed to be empty, Tony swears under his breath.

 

“They took the crown.”  He cuts off his Bruce’s rambling.

 

Bruce stares at him, open-mouthed.

 

“They took the crown!”  Tony looks under the table, around it, in the couch.  “It’s not here anymore, there’s nothing here.”

 

“What- What?”  Bruce marches over.  “How could they, we’ve been here the whole time.”

 

Tony rakes a hand through his hair as he glances around the room all frantic.  Bruce is trying to reel Tony back in but Tony keeps saying he's fine, he's okay, he’s not panicking.  And he’s not, he's just surprised at how events have unfolded, but still.

 

Tony doesn't want to say that he doesn't know how Loki and his team took the crown, but he really doesn't.   _ This _ is the part of his plan that was “TBD”, the part he was sure he and his team would be ready for when it came.  Tony stops to gather himself, then looks around the lounge as if for the first time: his current team consists of 3 people, one of whom is on an entirely different floor.  He and Bruce have been here the whole time; when Steve came in,  _ he _ was with them too.  So how could the crown have been snatched right under his nose?  What was he missing? What went wrong…

  
  
  
  


The elevator stops at Ara’s floor.  As soon as the doors open, she runs the length of the hallway into her floor like someone is after her.  In a way, it feels like that.  She stops as soon as she's within the lounge, pacing all over as she condenses everything she knows to a short list.

 

_ Firstly: Tony’s team had the crown _ .  She saw the footage and watched the fullness of Tony’s plans unfold.  Tony hid it in the coffee table once he had it.  His team stayed in the main lounge to guard it.

 

_ Lastly: At some point, between Tony hiding it in the coffee table to when I went to talk to Loki, Loki’s team stole it from Tony even though Tony never left the lounge _ .  Right now, that crown is sitting in Steve’s trash bin.  Ara recalls how weird Steve was acting when she walked in—they must have panicked when they heard her so they chucked it in the nearest trash bin.  Whichever bin that crown is in, it's somewhere within the lounge itself, and nowhere in another room.

 

_ Loki’s team managed to snatch the crown from Tony without being seen _ .  The question is how?

 

Ara jogs to her room and shuts the door.  She leans her forehead against the door, shutting her eyes.  That feeling she had of seeing things from the outside is back, but heavier.  But it’s not bad at all.  In fact, it's interesting, so interesting, to be the only one knowing all of this.  She traces the seed of the feeling: it started to take root when Loki and Tony decided to kick her out of the heist.

 

_ They made a decision.  It's my turn to make mine _ .

 

She opens her eyes.  When she turns around, she gasps.

 

Her battle suit is back.

 

It's hanging on the closet door, like how she swears she left it before it… disappeared?  Charging in the basement… How…

 

Ara approaches her own suit with caution.  She's not tricking herself, right?  This isn't an illusion.  Her suit is black with gold linings, it stands out anywhere, especially in her room.  But it's there, alright, on its hook on the closet door.

 

Her nose picks up a scent.  It's strong, and it gets stronger the closer she gets to the suit.  Ara furrows her eyebrows, unhooking the suit from the door.  She presses her face against the front of it, eyes closed, thinking...

 

Ara’s eyes snap open.   _ Angry lemons _ .

 

“ _ Clint _ .”

 

At 10:40 p.m., Ara’s elevator ride stops at the lab.  No one's inside but that can change shortly if she doesn't work quickly.

 

As the desktop that she used to watch footage reboots, Ara works with her phone, manually bypassing the many, many layers of security that its manufacturer placed on it.  She needs to hook her phone with the surveillance in the main lounge, the lab, and the Avengers’ floors.  With a Stark device, it would be easy; it’s different for her.  Her phone isn’t Stark tech and the cyber security at the Tower is an immense multi-layer cake of thick encryption even Ara’s clearance level doesn’t cover, which makes it rather difficult to get the network to “trust” her device.

 

Difficult, not impossible.

 

At 11 exactly, with her wits, JARVIS’s artificial intelligence, and a crazy miracle, she briefly opens a traffic for the Tower’s surveillance feed in those floors to sync with her phone.

 

“ _ I must remind you, Miss Ara, that unauthorized surveillance access is a breach of both Avengers Tower and Stark Industries security.  This is way beyond your clearance level _ .”

 

“Yes, JARVIS.”  Ara taps her foot incessantly as she waits for the synching to finish.  When it does, she closes the traffic and puts the security cake back together as best as she can... which wasn't that good.

 

“ _ And that you are an excellent engineer, but a hacker?  I cannot say _ .”  JARVIS comments.  A pause. __ “ _ Would you like me to erase your trace? _ ”

 

Ara smirks, shutting down the desktop.  “You’re a gem, JARVIS.  Happy Halloween.”

 

While JARVIS works to delete Ara’s prints from the mainframe and return the security cake to its original form, Ara makes a rapid elevator ride down to the lobby of the Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun-dun-dun. They should have been more careful with whom they're messing, huh?


	6. Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble, trouble, trouble...

“Ah, there she is,” Loki stands from the couch to welcome their visitor.  “The key to our victory.”

 

Pepper squints at him.  “Mm, not ours, just yours.  I just wanted to visit Tony, remember?”

 

“I still don't understand how he got you to play for his team,” Clint quips from his end of the couch.  He's back from returning Ara’s suit.  “Did he blackmail you or something? Got a secret only he knows?”

 

Steve shakes his head with a small smile.  “Nice to see you, Pepper.”

 

“It's nice to see you too, Steve,” Pepper replies pointedly, but she's smiling.  “Anyway, I just came by to drop this off.”

 

She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small plastic packet with an earpiece inside, exactly like those Loki’s team has donned for the heist.  She hands it to Loki.

 

“So, you got the… What was it— The ‘hallowed object’.  A crown, isn't it?” Pepper glances around Steve’s lounge.  “I don't see it…?”

 

“It’s—”

 

“Hidden,” Loki replies before Clint can.  “Safe and sound.  The sands of time continue to run and it's almost midnight.  Victory is assured.  Thank you again.”

 

“No need to thank me,” Pepper waves it off.  “It's just the heist, and anyway I need to get going.  Have fun; stay friends.” 

 

“I'll walk you out.”  Steve walks off with Pepper.

 

“Wait!”  Clint calls out.  “I'll come with.  I need to get something from Nat’s floor real quick.”

 

As they leave the lounge, Loki takes to the kitchen.  Gingerly, with his right pinky, he pushes the revolving lid of the trash bin and peeks at the crown inside.  Steve has a little habit of wrapping his trash in plastic bags before he throws them away; it helps with the smell, he says.  His unabashed neatness means the crown is sitting on top of cleanly wrapped trash, untouched by the garbage.

 

Still, Loki washes his hands.  Glancing at the bin one more time, he decides to pay Tony a little visit.

  
  
  
  


“Perfect,” Ara mutters, her eyes on the surveillance feed in Steve’s floor, before pocketing her phone.

 

For the first phase of her plan, she knew she needed to get everyone on Steve’s floor to leave.  Obviously, that's fixed for her.

 

Ara pushes a janitor’s cart out of the supply closet, except she isn't Ara, not right now, not exactly.  This whole time, she's been wearing her suit, shape-shifting mode activated.  A janitor’s uniform is projected onto the suit and a black mustache rests above Ara’s lip to complete the disguise.  She sprayed herself with a grapefruit air freshener to mask Clint’s cologne on her suit (it’s really pungent, it took _so much_ of the can).  Pushing through the Tower’s lobby on a Saturday past 11 is the easiest of her plans—staff working the weekend is scattered throughout the space, with no one blocking Ara’s way.

 

Ara spots Steve and Pepper exit the elevator.   _ Pepper’s here?  That's odd, the calendar doesn’t say she’d be here today _ .  Ara slows down a bit, letting the two get as far from the elevator as possible.

 

When she reaches the elevator, she pulls out her phone again and watches for where the teams are.  9 small squares on the screen separate the surveillance feeds on those 9 floors.  On the top floor, Loki strides proud and tall into the main lounge where Bruce and Tony are standing by the coffee table.  Thor is on his own floor (Ara guesses he and Nat have been back from whatever SHIELD needed them for) while Clint, Steve, and Tony’s floors are empty, as well as the lab.  Natasha and Clint are on Nat’s floor, talking or bantering.  Ara figures Sam and Bucky are still in the holding cell.  Her own floor is empty too.

 

Ara releases a breath, pocketing her phone.  The plan is working out so, so well. It is strange that Pepper was here, but Ara is pumping so much adrenaline that she really can't feel anything.  Her heart is steady and her mind is relatively clear.

 

The elevator stops at Steve’s floor.  She steps out as Janitor Edgar, the name tag big and glaring on the uniform, ready for Phase 2.

  
  
  
  


“Good evening, Stark,” Loki greets as he strolls into the lounge.

 

Tony straightens his back.  Bruce beside him shifts a little.  “What are you doing here?  Get back to base.”

 

“What?  I just wanted to see how you and your team are faring,” Loki drawls, hands clasped behind his back.  “After all, it's nearly midnight.”

 

“Why, you smug son of a—”

 

“Heist isn't over yet, pal,” Bruce says.  “Come back at midnight.”

 

Loki looks around the lounge slowly before settling on Tony and Bruce.  The 2 men look rattled, a hint of frantic on their visage.  Given that they're not afraid of Loki, it must be something else.  Ah, they must have been looking for the crown and seen that it's no longer with them.

 

Thor shows up.  “Loki.”

 

“Brother,” Loki returns.

 

“Okay, show’s over, big guy,” Tony says, his voice hardened.  “I don't need to see your face for another half-hour.”

 

“Why do you look pale, Tony?” asks Loki, tilting his head.  “See something you… don't like?”

 

Bruce observes him.  “Do you know something, Loki?  About the crown?”

 

“What about the crown?  Isn't it still in the holding cell?”

 

Tony and Bruce exchange a short look before Tony says, “Of course.  It's still there.  Still don't trust you though.”

 

“ _ Uh… Loki? _ ”  Clint’s voice cuts through to Loki’s earpiece.  “ _ The crown is gone _ .”

 

Loki blinks once.  Twice.  His nostrils flare just a bit, his hands’ grip on one another tightening.

 

“Excuse me,” he says, turning around.

 

Immediately, he dashes down the long hallway out of the lounge.  Tony runs to the kitchen and grabs the mic from the island before he, Bruce, and Thor run after Loki, their heavy steps echoing throughout the hallway.  Tony shouts for Sam and Nat to meet him and the team in the lab; Loki instructs his team to do the same.

 

There are 30 minutes left until midnight, and neither of them has the crown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter will be posted tomorrow, Halloween.


	7. King of the Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go here we go!!! i hope you all liked the previous chapters. let's finish strong! NINE-NINE!

Ara is invisible.

 

When the elevator reaches the main lounge and she steps out sans the cart, no one sees her.

 

She does see 4 grown men frantically run for the elevator only for the doors to close, forcing them to stuff themselves in along with the cart and wait for the elevator to go down.  Meanwhile, she walks past them quickly enough for the grapefruit scent not to linger too long about them. She has only one thing in mind, and she's almost there.

 

Still invisible.  Ara enters the lounge cloaked from head to toe.  The coffee table stands out in the lounge as if to say,  _ Welcome back _ .  Indeed.

 

Ara takes the crown from within her suit and places it inside the coffee table.  If all goes well, as it has been, no one will touch the table unless the time for her to tell them to arrives.

 

Back inside the elevator, she turns off cloaking and shape-shifts into the clothes she was wearing before donning the suit: dark blue blouse with a frilly collar and jeans.  On the way back to the lobby, she makes a few edits to the surveillance feed using her phone. She leans against the back of the elevator, smiling.

  
  
  
  


“I had the crown!”

 

“I know but then I took it from you!”

 

“That's impossible, I would have seen you, Bruce and I would have seen you!”

 

“Except I  _ did _ and now the crown is gone!”

 

The lab is filled with people, all of a sudden.  Natasha has already booted up the desktop. Everyone else is in varying forms of distress, holding their heads, muttering “How did this happen…”, arguing like Tony and Loki, or simply staring at an invisible camera like they’re in  _ The Office _ .

 

“Tony, we need to see the tapes,” Nat says, making space for Tony at the computer.

 

“Hey, JARV—”

 

“ _ No JARVIS _ !”  Loki sternly reminds him.  “The heist isn't over yet, Stark.”

 

Tony growls under his breath.  He keeps his word and pulls up the surveillance without JARVIS’s help.  As if on cue, all sounds and motions of distress in the lab cease, and they all lean in to watch the surveillance.

 

“Uh, I can’t hear anything, I think it’s on mute,” says Clint.

 

Tony draws a large breath and releases it through his nostrils.  “It’s not supposed to have audio.”

 

“Well, why the hell would you do that?”

 

“Wait.”  Steve raises a hand to no one.  “Look at that…”

 

The monitor shows Bruce’s floor.  Sam has walked in and planted himself in the holding cell.  Moments later, Bruce walks in, calmly striding across the lounge.  He stops by the door of the holding cell for a bit, then slams it open just as he did earlier.  Not long after, Nat and Thor appear in Bruce’s floor carrying some tools that has some people in the lab right now wondering what’s going to happen next.

 

It finishes as soon as it starts.  The surveillance has switched from ‘BANNER — LOUNGE’ to ‘BANNER — OFFICE’, playing the beginnings of Nat and Thor’s stunt.

 

“Oh, damn…”  Clint leans too close to the monitor, pulled in by all the theatrics.

 

They stand agape watching Thor work through the ceiling and Nat crawl inside and appear in the cell.  Bucky and Sam are open-mouthed when Nat stabs the briefcase; Steve eyes Thor just as the Thor in the feed pulls on the rope to retrieve Nat.  Needless to say, everyone in the room is impressed.

 

“Wait, so,” Bucky begins, turning to Sam, “you and Bruce arguing...was fake?”

 

“Yeah.  You thought it was real?”  Sam looks at Bucky incredulously.  “I would never argue with Banner for reasons you and I both know.”

 

Bruce only rolls his eyes.

 

“So Tony got the crown back and they stored it in the coffee table in the lounge,” Thor observes.  “Where does it go to next?”

 

Nat chooses to play back the surveillance in the lounge.  On the monitor, she and Thor walk out, most likely because SHIELD called them in then.  Tony fasts-forward to when Pepper enters the lounge. Behind him, Loki smirks a little.

 

Sam sees Loki's mouth quirk.  “Hold on a second...”

 

The surveillance continues to play, showing Steve huffing into the lounge carrying a book and a file.  Next, the coffee table begins to open, and Steve spills Bruce’s coffee.

 

“There it is…!”  Tony points at the screen, mouth open.  “But where is…”

 

The crown seemingly floats and then disappears.  Everybody who isn’t on Loki’s team starts to grumble into a chorus of “Hey, hey!” and “Where did it go?!” and “You better have not used magic, Loki”.  Steve on the screen has hit his head on the counter and everyone there is fussing over to help him.

 

Tony whisks around to face Loki.  “Where’s your base?”

 

“I—”

 

“ _ Where is your base?! _ ”

 

Loki looks at him funnily.  “Rogers’s floor.”

 

Nat automatically switches to the surveillance feed in Steve’s floor.  It shows Clint walking in wearing…

 

Nat turns around and glares at Loki.  “Really? Ara’s suit?”

 

“I said no higher-tech, Loki!”  Tony exclaims.

 

“ _ You _ said  _ you _ wouldn’t use higher-tech devices.”  Loki motions to himself. “ _ I  _ never promised to.”

 

Nat isn’t done.  “You kick Ara out of the heist and steal her stuff?”

 

Loki shrugs adamantly at her like,  _ I didn’t do anything _ .

 

Tony frowns.  He mutters something under his breath before turning back around, trying to ignore Loki entirely.  Nat shakes her head at him, eyes squinted, facing the computer again. Loki wouldn’t admit it, at least not to these people, but he’s beginning to feel bad for using Ara’s suit.

 

Nat clicked through the remaining feeds, selecting the one of Steve’s floor.

 

“Where did you hide the crown?” she asks, fast-forwarding through the footage 20 frames at a time so as not to miss anything.

 

“We were going to hide it in my studio,” Steve sighs, “but something came up.”

 

That “something”—or rather, someone—appears on the screen a few moments later.  Ara is shown pacing just around the corner from the long hallway into Steve’s lounge.  The feed switches momentarily to the cameras  _ inside _ the lounge, now showing Loki and Steve waving and tossing the crown from one to the other in panic.  Finally, Steve chucks it in the trash bin in the open kitchen before literally jumping over his couch and trying to look normal sitting on it.  Loki plops on the couch opposite him, and they wait.

 

Nat fasts-forward.  Ara and Loki are now arguing.  As Loki watches the surveillance unfold, he begins to feel even worse.  He watches himself yell at Ara (at her breasts, no less), towering over her, shouting in her face.  Ara is  _ fuming _ , and everyone in the room shrinks just a bit.  They’ve never seen her this angry before.

 

But for Loki, it’s the look of shock on Ara’s face when he yelled at her chest that finally sends him over.  For someone who’s been alive for thousands of years, who’s old enough to formulate his thoughts into words, he can’t seem to think straight.  He’s frozen to his spot, guilty, remorseful. He really disrespected his girlfriend for the sake of the heist, the woman he pined after for years, the woman he  _ knows  _ he loves.

 

What he saw on the screen... that doesn’t look like love.

 

A few eyes steal a glance at Loki.  Tony turns around, sees the blankness on Loki’s face, then fasts-forward, only pausing at when Pepper’s figure strides into Steve’s lounge.

 

Bruce raises his eyebrows.  “You got Pepper to play for you?”

 

Tony scoffs, smiling a little.  “Well, I hate to admit it but I’m impressed.”

 

Loki releases a quiet sigh through his nose, still wordless.  They fast-forward through the footage again, waiting for something significant to happen in Steve’s lounge.  For several moments, the lounge is empty. And then—

 

“Who’s that?”  Thor mumbles, leaning in further with brows furrowed.

 

A janitor pushes a cleaning cart onto Steve’s floor.  He rounds the corner where the surveillance camera tucked in the ceiling picks up his uniform-clad body.  Unfortunately, his face is obstructed by the cap on his head. Nat pauses the footage when his nametag appears on the screen loud and clear.

 

“Edgar,” Bucky reads.  “Tony, how many custodians work in the Tower?”

 

Tony grips the back of the computer chair tightly, staring intently at the screen.  “Several. 2 sets alternate throughout the week. They clean every day and stay later than most.  They’re allowed to clean up most open spaces, but they can’t go in your bedrooms and other rooms on your floors.”

 

“Do you remember if Pepper hired a man named Edgar?”  Bruce poses.

 

At this point, Edgar has taken out the trash from Steve’s garbage bin.  He holds the crown in his hand, turning it over and over before stuffing it in his uniform.

 

Tony shakes his head.  “Pepper doesn’t handle lower-level hiring.  Typically it’s Happy. If he’s unavailable, it goes to HR.”

 

“It’s a Saturday,” Sam says, folding his arms across his chest.  “Doubt anybody from HR is here.”

 

“What time is it?”  Bucky perks up.

 

Bruce checks his watch.  He sighs. “It’s nearly 11:45 and we have no crown!”

 

“Edgar’s probaby gone home, too,” Steve adds.

 

“Who else might know who this Edgar guy is?”  Nat asks no one in particular. “Someone who knows this building and the people in it, inside out.”

 

A few beats of silence.  Tony spins, staring at Loki in the face.  When their eyes meet, Loki’s eyes grow.

 

“ _ ARA! _ ”

  
  
  
  


Ara’s changed into sweatpants.  She’s been back on her floor for a while, now resting on the couch in the lounge, her laptop on a cushion on her lap.  She hears the heavy thuds on the floor getting louder as they near her lounge, but she doesn’t move. Let them come to her.

 

The first of them huffs and puffs, bending over and trying to catch his breath.  Ara spares a glance over her laptop and sees Loki heading towards her.

 

“What do you want, Loki?”   She blinks at him slowly.

 

The tone of her voice—a bit tired, annoyed, and sad—gives Loki pause.  But he pushes on. The heist is almost over, anyway.

 

“I, uh,” he begins rather stupidly.  “I came here to apologize. For you— Uh,  _ to _ you.  I apologize for hurting your feelings.”

 

Ara just stares at him, purposefully making him feel as uncomfortable as possible.

 

Loki shifts a little, then chuckles nervously.  “Well, uh, if you aren’t busy, may I have Edgar the janitor’s address?”

 

Ara scoffs, shaking her head.  “This is about the heist.”

 

“What?  Pfft, no!”  Loki can’t believe he just  _ pff _ ’ed.

 

Just then, Tony barges in.  He skids to a halt next to Loki, wheezing and mildly sweating but he tries to play it cool.

 

“Ara!  There’s my favorite person in the Tower,” he raps.  “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened here, did you know?”

 

Ara squints at him, setting aside her laptop.  She stands from the couch, arms folded across her chest.

 

“Let me guess: you want the janitor’s address.”

 

“What?  No, I don’t,” Tony feigns innocence.  “I don’t want Edgar’s address. What makes you think I want his address?”

 

“I never said his name.”

 

Tony and Loki exchange glances, hyper-aware of one another’s brain-farts.

 

“Well.  Isn’t this interesting.”  Ara’s smirk is scarily smug as she nears the men.  “Only hours ago, the two of you excluded me from the heist and now,  _ I _ have the power to decide who wins or loses it.”

 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tony kisses up.  “You are, after all, the best thing that’s happened in my life.”

 

“Pathetic.  You can’t manipulate her,” Loki spits.  He slides over so he’s the only one in Ara’s line of vision.  “Ara, do you remember when we went to see the cherry blossoms in Brooklyn?  Even then, I had so much love for you.”

 

Now Ara falters just the slightest bit: she and Loki haven’t used the word  _ love _ to each other before.

 

Tony butts in.  “Nonsense! What is love compared to respect from a superior?”

 

“ _ Enough! _ ”  Ara shouts, making them jump.  She snaps back and forth between them, unable to believe how ridiculous the both of them are.  “Pretending to be nice to me is worse than being mean!”

 

A short, stuffy silence falls upon the lounge.  Ara shakes her head at the floor, heavily disappointed at her boss and at her boyfriend.  Tony feels guilty trying to butter her up, but to be very honest, ever since Ara’s first day, Stark Tower’s work output has improved drastically.  Her mind, spirit, and personality enlivened the Tower so much to the point that Tony promoted her as his personal assistant and, essentially, protégée.  When she underwent terragenesis and became an Avenger, that was just icing on the cake.

 

Meanwhile, Loki’s guilt has doubled and is consuming him from within.  He means what he said, but it’s his fault he said it so out-of-context.  Why would he profess his love for her  _ during the heist _ ?  For all the genius planning he’s put in this heist, he’s incredibly out of touch with the most important person to him—the only one he should have cared about this whole time.

 

“You want the janitor’s address?”  Ara fishes her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants and starts typing aggressively.  “Fine. You both can have it.”

 

Tony’s phone chirps; Loki’s phone vibrates.  Neither of them reach for it.

 

Ara glares at them.  “I hope you’re happy.”

 

She turns and grabs her laptop and stomps to her room.  Tony and Loki linger in the lounge, equally frustrated with how things have turned out tonight.  They just wanted to have a fun heist! But it seems they ruined it for everybody, especially Ara.

 

“I feel bad,” says Tony.

 

“We should’ve been better,” Loki adds.

 

Tony reaches for his phone.  He means to see a message from Ara, but his gaze wanders and sticks to the time.

 

“It’s 11:53.”

 

He and Loki stare at each other.  They don’t even breathe when they speed out of Ara’s lounge and floor, determined to end the heist after all.

 

As he runs, Tony calls Nat’s phone.  “NATASHA, THOR, SAM, BRUCE, MEET ME IN THE LOBBY NOW!”

 

Loki presses a finger to his right ear.  “ALPHA TEAM, THIS IS GREEN GOOSE! RENDEZVOUS AT ZONE LIMA — STAT!”

 

“WHEN’D YOU COME UP WITH CODE NAMES?!”

 

“HIGH KNEES, STARK!  HIGH KNEES!”

  
  
  
  


As soon as Ara closes the door to her bedroom, she grabs her suit on the bed and stuffs herself in it, plastering the fake mustache on her upper lip and fits the cap on her head before activating the suit’s cloaking mode.  The address that she gave Tony and Loki is at her old apartment, a 30-story complex about a mile and a half away from the Tower. A close acquaintance lives in the unit she’s sending them to, and the woman asked no questions when Ara told her what she’s about to do.  Ara also knows they’ll all take the streets to get there, and even if they cut through tight alleyways or use vehicles, they’ll still get there late. For her, anyway.

 

Ara waits until the sound of Tony and Loki running becomes faint before she steps out into her lounge.  When she rounds the corner, the elevator door has just closed, sending those two down to the lobby, most likely.  She jogs to the elevator and has JARVIS lock the doors so no one else uses it as she descends.

 

She steps out of the Tower, the cold breeze hitting her invisible cheeks immediately.  In the near distance, she hears the booming voices of Sam and Bucky yelling that get softer the farther they run off.  She assumes that all of them are heading to the apartment on foot.  _ Unbelievable _ , she shakes her head, heading the opposite way.

 

When Ara first underwent terragenesis, she thought it was a disease.  It’s when she realized that she could bend the earth that she began to change her mind.

 

Normally, she only uses her abilities for good, substantial work.  Tonight, however, isn’t normal.

 

Ara stops in the outdoor parking lot for Stark Tower.  Tucked in a private walled space and void of cars, there are no curious eyes who can witness what she’s about to do.  She glances around one more time, for good measure.

 

Then Ara stomps her foot once, and the earth swallows her.

  
  
  
  


Of Loki’s team, he and Steve make it inside the apartment building first.  Loki clutches at his hip, thigh, stomach, and every other part of his body that aches from running for so long without stopping.  Steve has his arm wrapped around Loki’s shoulders, hauling him forward. It takes a  _ lot _ for Steve  _ and _ Loki to be exhausted, and they’re not too tired right now, but all that running and adrenaline are still too much.

 

“Okay—” Loki wheezes.  “He lives… on the 16th floor…!”

 

“I think we beat Tony,” Steve inhales.  Bucky and Clint stumble into the building behind them.

 

“OR DID YOU?”  Tony shouts from the other side of the hallway.  Behind him are his teammates in varying levels of exhaustion; Bruce is definitely experiencing the worst of it.

 

In the middle of the hall is an elevator, just right next to the staircase.  Both teams drag themselves to the elevator, trying to beat each other even by a few steps.  As they approach, a piece of red paper taped to the doors makes itself more legible. ‘OUT OF ORDER’, it screams in their faces.

 

“Damn it!”  Tony curses.  “We’re gonna have to take the stairs.”

 

“It’s  _ 16 _ floors!”  Bruce bellows in between wheezes.  “Pace yourselves!”

 

Loki, Steve, Bucky, and Clint speed past them up the stairs in a blur.

 

“FORGET IT, RUUUUUUUUUUUN!”

 

Imagine, if you will, that you’re sleeping peacefully, already perfectly in the REM part of the sleep cycle, when a thunder of people jogging up the staircase of your apartment ascend the entire building, filling every available space with noise.  Several tenants stir in their sleep, some wake up, but none actually go out to check what’s happening because every few seconds, the jogging pauses.

 

The jogging pauses because somebody starts gagging.  Bruce, who’s holding up the rear, clutches his stomach and the railing before  _ vomiting _ on the platform where he stands.  When he goes up about three steps, he vomits again.  He only keeps going because Nat and Sam pull him up. At the top, Tony and Loki try to push one another out of the way, adding to the amount of energy they’re exerting.  These shenanigans go on for 16 floors.

 

At some point, Tony stops to take a quick breath, bending over with his hands on his upper thighs.  When he looks up, he catches a sign on the wall that proclaims,  _ FLOOR 16 _ .

 

“We’re here,” he says like a question.

 

He and Loki approach the door that corresponds to Janitor Edgar’s address.  Loki raps on the door with one hand while the other cradles his rib.

 

A middle-aged woman opens the door.  They don’t speak, so she does. “Can I help you?”

 

Tony is  _ frustrated _ .  “You’re not Edgar.”

 

“You’re looking for Edgar?”

 

“Of course we’re looking for Edgar, you imbecile!”  Loki exclaims, then he realizes what he said. “Sorry.”

 

The woman just sighs.  “He’s having a cigarette on the roof.”

 

Everybody on the staircase groans in unison.  They  _ just _ finished trekking up 16 stories, and now they need to go up 15 more?!

 

It’s already well past midnight, but nobody checks the time because they’re already here anyway.  They know they’re close to the crown, yet so far from it too. At this point, though, what matters more is who reaches the janitor first.

 

So they keep going for 15 more floors.  Their speed and stamina have significantly decreased; even the super-soldiers and the gods on the teams are  _ completely  _ winded.  Bruce, once again, is having the worst experience out of all of them, but he keeps going anyway, at least to just keep up with everyone else.  Clint and Nat have their arms around each other, helping one another climb the steps. Tony is full-on wheezing, and every breath Loki takes is a stab through his lungs.

 

Both Loki and Tony push open the door leading to the roof.

 

“YES!”  Tony yells into the night, arms stretched upwards, his breath coming out as fog.  “I DID IT!”

 

The teams stumble out onto the rooftop like drunkards, slurring their groans and struggling to keep upright.  At least the coldness of the night is helping clear their lungs.

 

Loki is bent over with his hands on his knees, gulping as much air as he can.  When he lifts his head, through the spots clouding the edges of his vision, he makes out the figure of a man looking out over the rooftop with his back to them.  He tries to speak, fails, takes a  _ deep _ breath, and stands back up.

 

“Are you… Are you Edgar?  The janitor?”

 

The janitor stuffs his hands into the pockets of his uniform.  No cigarette.

 

“Nope,” the janitor says, and for a moment everybody else on the rooftop pauses because  _ is that… a woman’s voice? _

 

And then the janitor turns, slowly.  His head is bowed, and he’s wearing a cap, so they can’t see his face.  They keep their eyes glued to him, waiting.

 

“I’m your worst nightmare.”

 

The janitor takes off his cap, and his mustache.  When he—well, she—looks up, they gasp.

 

Tony yells, “ _ Ara?! _ ”

  
  
  
  
  


Loki’s face darkens, all exhaustion erased.

 

“No,” he says.

 

“Yes,” Ara drawls smugly.

 

“I don’t...understand what is happening,” Tony utters.

 

The smirk on Natasha’s face grows slowly.  She nods at Ara. “How’d you pull this off?”

 

“Well,” Ara begins, “it all started when I went to tell Tony that he hurt my feelings and then he yelled at my breasts.”

 

Ara proceeds to stare disappointedly at her superior.  The ones in the group who have no idea what she means just shakes it off.

 

“Remember when you set off the witch in the main lounge?”  Ara addresses Tony. Instantly, he recalls. “You made Loki wince, which was weird, since he was out in the hallway, but not weird, since he heard it through a bug he planted on you.”

 

Tony snaps to Loki.  “You did what?”

 

“Check your sleeve,” Ara nods to Tony.

 

The man pats around both sleeves until he feels a tiny bump on his right sleeve.  He plucks it off and holds it up to his eyes. Indeed, a bug.

 

“The bug is Stark tech, and JARVIS helped me tap into its frequencies, so I had ears on you.”  Ara turns to Loki. “But I still felt hurt being left out of the heist, and I figured I needed to talk to my boyfriend.”

 

Loki closes his eyes and draws out a long sigh, mentally kicking himself.

 

“Wouldn’t you know it, he yelled at my breasts, too,” Ara relays.  Sam and Bucky make noises in the back of the pack to tease Loki. “So I left, and then I heard him tell Steve that they have the crown.  And then I come back to my room where I discovered something peculiar: my suit, which wasn’t there before, now smelling like Clint’s cologne.”

 

Nat elbows Clint in the side.

 

“I tapped into the surveillance, stole the crown for myself, placed an out-of-order sign on the  _ perfectly _ functional elevator,  _ and  _ made you all go up 31 flights of stairs.  Hope no one vomited.”

 

“I did, actually,” Bruce says too quietly.  “I did. Couple times.”

 

“You thought I was just Tony’s lackey”—Ara gives a pointed look at Loki, then turns to Tony—”and you thought I was just Loki’s girlfriend.  Well, I’m my own person, capable of making my own decisions. And I decided to humiliate you both.”

 

Loki can’t help but be impressed, but mostly be fascinated.  Ara is full of surprises, and having listened to her recount how she defeated not one but  _ both _ teams, he is filled with an overwhelming pride, and respect, and adoration.

 

Loki smiles.  “Well, you did, and you were amazing.”

 

Ara meets his gaze and returns a smile, pleased with herself, pleased that Loki likes that she’s pleased with herself.  She also realizes that she isn’t shying away from his eyes anymore.

 

“One last question,” Tony says, “where’s the crown?”

 

“Oh, it’s in the coffee table, in the main lounge.  The official site of my coronation.”

  
  
  
  
  


“Hear ye, hear ye!”  Tony raises the crown like it’s Simba.  “All hail the hallowed crown of glory!”

 

Everyone raises their glasses of liquor and whoops.

 

“And all hail she who wears it.”  Tony rests it on Ara’s head where it fits like a glove.  “Ara, queen of the Tower.”

 

Ara’s grin is as bright as a real crown.  Loki, who’s standing next to Tony, watches how the smile spreads on Ara’s face, how a wholesome joy emanates from her being.  He stopped feeling bad about losing a while ago when he realized how much better it is to find happiness in Ara’s victory.

 

Ara turns to Tony and Loki expectantly.  “I believe there’s something else you both need to say.”

 

The men exchange a brief glance before reciting, “ _ Ara is the ultimate Avenger-slash-genius! _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!! i hope you liked this story as much as i do <3
> 
> (peep me dressed up as amy: instagram.com/juhannah hehe)
> 
> ILY ALL! now let's binge every b99 halloween episode


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